


Home's where the Heart is

by Solrosfalt



Category: Fire Emblem: Shin Ankoku Ryuu to Hikari no Ken | Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, I just want Minerva and Palla to chill and eat ice-cream ok, Loss of Parent(s), Marth and Caeda and Lena are background characters, Michalis is still a bag of dirt, Minerva with racoon eyes and piercings you can't stop me, Modern AU, No sex/smut, OOC? maybe a little, Quick Burn, Teenage Drama, The AU no-one asked for, Wouldn't be a Minerva-centric fic without some mention of political drama, just fluff and angst and high school drama and kisses, own universe
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 16:29:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14453244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solrosfalt/pseuds/Solrosfalt
Summary: Palla, having just had to move into the Macedonan capital with her two sisters, finds an unlikely friend in confident and charismatic Minerva. All Palla wants is to find a home in the midst of her recent loss, and maybe, that is just what she will do...A modern AU, taking place in a fictional high school and in a fictional town.





	Home's where the Heart is

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't get this idea out of my head. I just wanted a short-ish thing with Minerva and Palla in modern times, so I'm doing it. 
> 
> Trying some new things, too. Me, writing quick burn? whaaaat. I also write this as I go (WHAAAT). The first draft is not yet finished, meaning this might still be edited and I don't know when any updates will happen.
> 
> ANYHOW I HOPE YOU ENJOY

Palla didn’t usually skip.

On the other hand, she usually liked Social Studies – and that was something that had definitely changed in the last week, just like so much else in her life.

She dragged her steps through the hallway. The sound of the bell cut through the air, and she winced; not only because the metaphorical drill through her eardrum, but because the sound filled her chest with a cold dread.

She was _doing_ this.

It wasn’t just a thought, anymore.

Palla clenched her jaw and focused her gaze on the door at the end of the hallway, directing a rude notion to the teacher on the other side of it, probaly just beginning her lecture on Macedon’s glorious history.  
The action felt good at first, but then Palla was struck by the thought that if her dad had known the extent of her insulting thoughts… Her dad who never let an ugly phrase pass from his mind to his tongue…  
_Words are more than just a sound, children, they can do real harm._  
Palla tossed her head and wrinkled her face, shutting her eyes in the process.  
She didn’t want to remember his disappointed expression – she wanted to remember his smile.  
The same smile that he got as soon as spring came, when he could paint on the balcony…

Palla opened her eyes.

She had stopped in the middle of the hallway. The last stragglers were making their way to the classrooms in the hallway behind her, but nothing moved in front of Palla.  
Though there was something that caught her eye – a black shoe, sole as thick as Est’s portions of breakfast waffles (which was thick indeed), moving back and forth like a pendulum. Palla might not have noticed it if it wasn’t for the ornaments of metal around the shoelaces that glittered in the sun shining in from the window behind the shoe.  
The person it belonged to was hidden by the end corner of the lockers. The shoe swayed slowly back and forth, and after each pendulum, the heel banged into the end-locker’s wall.  
_Bang._  
_Bang._  
_Bang._

Palla fiddled with the shoulder-strap on the canvas bag she carried her books in. Her aunt had offered her a backpack, but Palla was fond of her green canvas bag. It had been the faithful carrier of her piano sheets in her earlier life, and although Palla doubted she ever wanted to play again, she couldn’t quite let go of this bag. It was stupid, really, she knew that, but she felt some sort of reassurance when she fiddled along the holes from the numerous pins she’d collected and now removed.  
The strap cut into her shoulder from the heavy books she carried. Books she wouldn’t open today.

The thought reminded her of her situation – standing _out here_ , while all her classmates were behind the door at the end of the hallway, _over there_ …  
Palla took another few steps. It wasn’t too late. She could still apologize for being late and slip into the hellfire of Social Studies. 

The canvas bag thumped against her hip no more than four times until she stopped again.

The sun shone in from the window onto the floor by Palla’s feet, and cast a sharp shadow that fell over the better half of Palla’s face. It made her look, and once she did, she couldn’t look away.

The shoe stopped swaying.

Palla stared right into a pair of dark eyes surrounded by edges carefully painted black – and eyelids dashed far less carefully with something Palla could only imagine to be soot. Palla's focus stuck to the soot instead of the gaze meeting hers below it. She caught herself doing so, but was immediatly afterward distracted by the way stray hairs from the stranger's forelocks moved in the air current from the heater below the windowsill. Something about how the hairs danced in the backlight gave the person on the windowsill an otherworldly impression. Like a dark fairy, queen of the sunlit windowsills. 

Palla knew she shouldn’t stare, but so much of her social skills had been chafed away during the later weeks, she didn’t really care. Some part of her was still embarrassed of not maintaining eye contact though, so she looked down to meet the gaze hiding in the pools of black soot.

Palla had already challenged her personality enough. The old Palla didn’t skip class, she didn’t stare at her peers, and she _didn’t_ speak to strangers with piercings and dark makeup around their eyes (such strangers usually looked at Palla and her bright clothes with some level of disdain). But this black-eyed stranger didn’t look annoyed by Palla’s odd choice to stop and quietly stare at her – or perhaps a little, but the same amount that most people reacted to strangers looking at them weird – this windowsill-fairy looked at Palla with _interest_ , her lips slightly parted.  
Perhaps that was exactly why Palla opened her mouth.

“Hello”, she said.

The girl on the windowsill shut her lips, and her eyebrows shot up as if she was surprised Palla could talk.

“G… Hey.” The first sound of her greeting sounded more like a gulp to Palla, and perhaps it had been. The girl might not have talked for a while – Palla recognized the phenomenon from when she herself had kept from talking at the summer swim camp. Her voice had gulped so much she wondered if she’d swallowed too much chlorine.  
The windowsill-fairy quickly recovered, and her features formed a small smile, a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. Her foot started swaying again, though she no longer banged it into the locker beside her.

“The bell’s rung”, the fairy said.

Palla frowned, tried to focus on something else, to stop having her mind refer to this girl as a fairy, what was _wrong_ with her…

“I’m skipping”, Palla answered her.

The girl pursed her lips, her lower lip folded outward. “Same.” The girl let out a small laugh and turned her head to look out through the window. “Obviously.”

“Not so obvious, you could have free period for all I knew”, Palla said, flushing at how stupid it sounded. Now _she_ was stating obvious things.

The girl only smiled, though she didn’t look away from the window. “What class?”

“Social Studies.”

“Hah.” The girl’s face turned back to Palla, and somehow, it was still jarring for Palla to see that gaze dig into hers. The stranger had eyes made to pin people down, but they were at the same time not too threatening. They were soft like the dull spikes around the collar on the girl’s jacket – they could still hurt, but their main purpose was to make people step back.

“Who you’ve got?”

“What?”

“Who’s your teacher?”

“Mrs. Avley.”

The girl let out another scoff, and she tipped her head to the side with a smug smile. The girl was clearly over being stunned by Palla’s sudden appearance, she was confident now. In her element; her relaxed stance told Palla she was a seasoned skipper.

“No way”, the girl grinned. “Same here. I can’t stand her. We’re in the same block, then?”

“Oh”, Palla said. “Okay, yeah, maybe. I'm in 11th. I’m new, though. I’m… My name’s Palla.”

The girl lifted her chin in something that looked like an acknowledging nod. “I’m Minerva.”

Palla nodded back. She looked over her shoulder, into the empty hallway. The girl’s – _Minerva’s_ – relaxed indifference gave Palla the signal that she was open to more conversation, and Palla liked the thought of talking to her – she had a nice voice, and she had a smile that was both open and secretive. The problem for Palla was that she usually never took the initiative for small talk, and with her lack of practice, she was afraid she’d screw up. She looked back on Minerva, trying to think of anything to say, and her eye was caught by the numerous rings and droplets in Minerva’s ear. They were an unconventional blend of silvers, greens, reds and gold clashing with orange and blue – it was the only thing in her outfit that sparked with unabashed color.

“I… I like your piercings.” Palla finally said. She pointed to her ear.

A hardness appeared around Minerva’s eyes for a moment, before she returned to her confident demeanor. “Oh, thanks.” She blinked slowly, and her sly smile revealed that some of her red lipstick had dyed a red line along her front teeth. “I’ve got some invisible ones too.”

Palla felt her entire body’s worth of blood shot to her head, her mind immediately jumping on the thought.  
_No no no_ , she thought to herself, focusing her eyes on anywhere but anything inappropriate, and it stopped at the spot beneath Minerva’s ear, the small dimple behind her jaw. In her peripheral vision; Palla had already taken in the small leather jacket Minerva wore over a white high neck, and she saw it move with an apologetic and embarrassed shrug.

“Was just joking”, Minerva said. She sounded flustered; perhaps she hadn’t expected Palla to react so strangely to her comment. “I don’t _actually_ —“

“Yeah”, Palla hurriedly added, just to say something. She cleared her throat and looked out through the window, feeling her face cool off. She wished she could have responded in a similarly confident way to such a jab, but this wasn’t something Palla was used to; she was quiet, always the quiet, careful and respectful kid.

She wished she had still kept one of her pins on her canvas bag; a white heart with _GIRLS_ written in the middle of it – a statement that befitted her timid nature. She’d bought that pin almost as soon as she’d discovered her preferences. Back then Palla was too shy to tell any girl to her face that Palla found them likeable and that she’d like to dance with them in a _romantic_ manner, so she’d worn that pin as a first step into that conversation. Palla found every girl marvellously pretty, and she'd felt a spark with some of them when she'd grown up - though she was too shy to ever ask if they wanted to be _together_ -together. That was during the middle school discos, and not much had actually happened since then. She'd been too busy caring for two younger sisters and one sick father, for one thing.  
And now she’d removed that old _GIRLS_ pin along with the others (motifs consisting of horses, unicorns, pigeons, the insignia of her old swim team, and a hand-drawn pin of their old house her dad had made). She had wanted to be invisible for her first months in this new school environment, without anyone asking for her interests or old life.

She really regretted that now, because _if_ Minerva had been (though why would she have) _flirting_ – it would be absurd; Palla didn’t feel the least bit interesting right then… But _if_ , Palla would have liked to make it a bit more obvious that she had a similar interest. She felt drawn to the smooth spikes of Minerva’s gaze, though now she was even _less_ sure of what to say.

“Well, uhm, Palla, yeah?” Minerva righted her stance on the windowsill, sitting straighter, and Palla’s eyes automatically drew to the movement in her peripheral vision – and to her surprise, she found that Minerva’s cheeks had turned into a hue of reddish brown that hadn’t been there before. “Sorry I said that, didn’t mean to make it weird. It comes up on autopilot. I’m more used to people scoffing at my piercings, and I just want them to go away, you know.”

“Really?” Palla was relieved to have Minerva pick up the conversation, it was much easier to uphold one than to start it. “Well, I honestly think they’re very pretty, so...”

Had Palla overstepped with that? Minerva only smiled though, so it couldn’t have been that bad.

“What did Mrs. Avley do to make you skip? If you don’t mind me prying. She’s popular with most.”

Palla grimaced. “Maybe I just hate Social Studies.”

“Oh, come on”, Minerva laughed, some of the flush on her face lessening. “You’re _so_ tense. Not used to this rule-breaking, are you?”

“Not really, no.” Palla grimaced again. Her story with Mrs Avley was something she hadn’t even told Catria or Est about – this past week she’d been too busy listening to her sisters’ stories to tell them her own. “Well. Mrs Avley just wouldn’t stop pestering me. She asked me how I came to be here, and I told her I moved in with my aunt, and I thought that would be enough, but no, she wanted to know _why_ I’d do that – and I told her I just lost my damn dad.”

Another ugly word. Palla blinked away the image of her dad’s disappointed expression, along with the tears that had formed in the corners in her eyes. “Then Mrs Avley just shrugged and turned to the class, and said, like, _speaking of orphans, we’ll continue our journey through the years 700-750, when wars tore families apart and 60 % of children lost their parents_ …”  
Palla regretted speaking when the tears came again. Minerva’s head shot back, thumping into the glass. 

“She _didn’t_.”

Palla didn’t move, afraid that her tears would run over and she’d lose the will to speak. She’d somehow managed not to cry during that Social Studies class. The anger had clashed with her shock like a kick in her belly, her tears halted by the breathlessness. She’d sat there while her grief and pain was made into a teachable moment by the only adult in the room, the one who was supposed to be mature and sensible. 

Minerva had slid forth a bag from behind her on the windowsill, and dug through it. She fished up a half-full package of tissues, and reached them over to Palla.

“Sorry about your dad.”

Palla felt her gaze tremble, and didn’t doubt that her voice would too, should she speak. She only nodded and took a tissue, dabbing it at her eyes.

“’S okay”, she mumbled. “We knew it would happen for, like, a year.”

Palla didn’t like this subject. If they’d been flirting before, they definitely weren’t now. Although in some strange way, it was nice to let this perfect stranger know what weighed on her heart.  
Though perhaps Minerva didn’t appreciate it in the same way; the hardness had returned around her eyes, and she gave the inside of her fake leather bag an angry glare when she returned the package of tissues.

“Still hurts, I’d imagine.”

“Don’t really wanna talk about it”, Palla said, and that was the honest truth. Sure it maybe felt a little bit good to speak of such things, but she didn’t want to dampen the spirits even further. She waved her wrinkled tissue, hugged tightly between her fingers “Thanks, though.”

“No sweat.” Minerva wasn’t looking at her; her gaze was stuck to the floor at Palla’s feet.

Palla wanted to ask her if she could sit opposite her on that windowsill, but thought better of it. A queen of windowsills might not want to invite random tear-eyed strangers into her kingdom. Palla shouldn’t push her luck with all this socializing.

“I should go to the library”, Palla muttered. “Nice talking with you - _to you_ , I mean.”  
She righted her shoulder strap nervously, suddenly unsure. Which words were the right ones? Did it matter, or didn’t it?

Minerva placed her bag in her lap, her arms wrapped around it. She’d begun to look out of the window again.

“See you around, I suppose”, Palla said.

The sun hid behind a cloud, and Palla could see the reflection of Minerva’s face in the window. She wasn’t looking at Palla, but she was smiling.

“Yeah”, she said. “I hope so.”


End file.
